Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Do imaginative artists uncover the nature of human consciousness? According to Jonah Lehrer, they do -- at least in the field of neuroscience. His short and very thought-provoking book describes how the work of Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Wolf relates to the current understandings of mind and consciousness as revealed by the neurosciences. Lehrer describes how the work of some artists, originally rejected as jarringly modern, chaotic, or meaningless, can be seen as the artist's way of breaking down old thought patterns to establish new ones. It is as if they have had an intuitive insight into how our neurons and synapses work. I found it utterly fascinating.

Excellent book.